Bang-up job from O.C. deputies

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Forget the “Starsky and Hutch” road maneuvers, some Orange County sheriff's deputies seem to have a hard time with the simplest tasks, like backing into and out of parking spaces, according to records detailing 558 crashes involving department cars between January 2009 and June of this year.

Orange County Sheriff's Department vehicles logged 8.4 million miles last fiscal year, but had only a few injury collisions. The majority of accidents recorded in more than 1,000 pages of reports were minor fender benders caused primarily by inattention, sometimes in the sheriff's own parking lot.

At least eight times during the review period, patrol cars rolled into other objects after deputies exited the vehicles without putting them into park. In one incident, a patrol car left idling Feb. 25, 2010, with a canine named Tupper inside “spontaneously reversed,” wrote the deputy, hitting the lattice patio enclosure at Adriano's Pizza in Westminster.

At least five times, deputies drove away from gasoline pumps with the nozzle still in the tank.

On a few occasions, deputies caused accidents or rear-ended other vehicles because they were using their mobile data screens, looking at a cellphone, turning up radios or otherwise distracted, according to incident reports.

Documents show that at least 20 deputies were involved in three or more collisions during the 3 1/2-year review.

Sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said the number of accidents was minimal compared with the number of logged miles.

“This is not a story. You drive so many miles; the statistics say you're going to get into an accident. They are human beings driving, even though they are trained in emergency driving,” Amormino said.

Numbers provided by the department show the sheriff spent $670,607 during the last 4 1/2 years on accident repairs. The most expensive year was $243,549 in 2008. That was the same year that a distracted deputy triggered a three-car collision that cost the county $3.1 million to settle lawsuits.

While the Orange County Sheriff's Department largely escaped major accidents during the review period, the fender benders show a dangerous inattention and a tendency to follow other cars too closely.

A detective was driving a brand-new department Camry into his home garage in January 2009 when he scraped the side of a wall. “I miscalculated the turn. … The collision occurred due to my inattention,” he wrote.

Deputy Craig Nelson was pursuing a Saab in November 2009 in Dana Point when it turned a corner and stopped. Nelson also rounded the corner and smacked into the vehicle. Asked by traffic investigators how he could have avoided the accident, Nelson responded that the Saab could have yielded sooner.

Deputy M. Mraz was at a Fullerton park one afternoon in February 2010 issuing a ticket for drinking in public. After the citation was written, Mraz jumped into his patrol car – and backed into a light pole, scraping and tearing his left bumper. When asked what he could do differently, Mraz said he should check his blind spots.

Deputy Edward B. Hutchinson was parking his patrol car in Aliso Viejo in November 2011 when he sneezed, causing him to bump an adjacent patrol unit. The damage was minor, but Hutchinson wrote that he learned an important lesson: “Don't try to park while sneezing.”

There were also a few incidents of cars veering into center medians due to officer inattention. In one case, a deputy fishing for his dropped cellphone hit the median at Benjamin Drive and Artisan Street in Ladera Ranch, flattening a tire.

Deputy M. Fregoso was driving in reverse, chasing after two suspects running down a San Juan Capistrano alley, when his car crashed March 2009 into a Dumpster.

“I never saw the Dumpster,” Fregoso explained in the report.

Not all the accidents were the fault of deputies. Some were caused by drunken drivers. In June 2009, a suspected drunken driver pulled over by Deputy Robert Edwards in Dana Point backed 20 feet into the patrol car. The driver was arrested.

Sheriff Sandra Hutchens in recent years has initiated a safe driving program, which includes a review board that investigates every collision. Multiple offenders are penalized or given remediation, Amormino said. Posters in briefing rooms remind deputies to drive safely.

The Sheriff's Department wasn't the only law-enforcement agency banging up cars. The Santa Ana Police Department, which drives 1.6 million miles a year, had 157 crashes in the review period. Anaheim police, with 1.1 million miles, had 213 accidents.

We asked the cities for reports on those crashes, but they cited 6254(f) of the California Public Records Act, which exempts investigations by police agencies, and refused to release them. The Watchdog believes these cities do have some record other than the accident reports, and we will be pursuing those.

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